Demystifying Conversion Rate Optimization

October 19, 2015

8:06 pm

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Do you have trouble getting your website visitors to perform the action you want?

If so, you’re not alone.

Research has shown that many businesses are only able to convert just about 4% of the total number of people that visit their sites.

But, here’s the good news:

There’s a way you can turn ordinary website visitors into paying customers and that’s Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

Through conversion rate optimization, you can get people to do whatever you want them to do on your website including buying your products.

In this article, you’d get to know how to do just that, but first let’s get to know what conversion rate optimization is.

What’s Conversion Rate Optimization?

To better understand Conversion Rate Optimization, we would have to deconstruct the phrase. Let’s start with “conversion. ”

Conversion is when a website visitor does what you want them to do while

Conversion Rate is the total number of people who do what you want them to do on your website. This can be buying your product, downloading an app, or just any action you want them to take.

So, what about Conversion Rate Optimization?

Here:

Conversion Rate Optimization is the technique of using analytics and user feedback to make a website perform better in terms of the action you want visitors to take.

It’s about getting your website visitors to respond to a CTA and complete a definite action.

Same can be understood from the image below:

Why CRO is Important

Traditionally, if you were running an online business and wanted to increase your revenue, your best bet would be to increase your traffic. Right?

But CRO has changed that. Conversion optimization allows you to increase your revenue even without increasing your traffic and without any SEO.

This is why CRO matters. It lets you get the best out of your website visitors; it lets you boost your profit.

Without conversion rate optimization, users won’t convert even if you have thousands of visitors. This proves that traffic alone isn’t a guarantee for successfully increasing your revenue.

But with the right CRO in place? You can generate quality leads, make more sales and supercharge your revenue.

And you don’t have to spend truck loads of money to do that. In fact, compared to other marketing strategies such as paid advertising, CRO is a low hanging fruit for people who want to get more out of their site but are on a tight budget.

Even more, conversion rate optimization can pay for itself. All you have to do is to make the initial investment.

That said, here are some methods of optimizing your conversion rate:

Conversion Rate Optimization Methods

A/B testing: This is the process of comparing two different webpage elements (eg. CTA buttons, forms etc. ) to see which performs better.

For instance, before HubSpot acquired them, Performable A/B tested a CTA button color, the original being green against a red variation.

Landing page optimization (LPO): Here’s where you optimize your landing page to convert better. It may be writing a better headline, using a shorter form, including more call-to-action buttons and so on.

User experience optimization (UXO): User experience (UX) is the total experience of the people using your website; it’s how visitors feel about your offering. UXO is about optimizing that experience and making them feel better and saver to take action.

Multivariate testing: This is the technique of testing multiple variables of different elements with the hope of increasing conversion.

Usability testing: This involves testing a product with representative users to improve user experience and conversion.

Out of all the methods listed above, A/B testing is the most used method as this study found:

Now, you may ask:

“Is it possible to know your site’s conversion rate?”

Sure! As a matter of fact, not only is it possible, it’s important and necessary too.

Here’s how to calculate and measure your site’s conversion rate.

How to Calculate Your Website’s Conversion Rate

Calculating your website’s conversion rate is pretty easy. You need just two numbers to do this:

The total number of visitors to your site

The number of conversions (number of people that take the action you want)

After that, divide the total number of conversions by the number of your website visitors.

For example, if your website receives 5,000 visitors out of which 50 have been converted, you have a conversion rate of 1%. . .

50/5000 is 0.01 which is expressed as 1%.

Tips for Increasing Your Conversion Rate

So what if after calculating your conversion rate, the numbers are not impressive? What do you do?

Here are some tips to help you increase your conversion rate:

Keep the trust factor in mind: More often than not, trust plays an important role in converting site visitors. Generally, people are hesitant to share their personal details and credit card information online. Thus, you have to build trust and boost your credibility by including trust seals such as Norton and TRUSTe.

Optimize for mobile users: With the number of mobile users increasing by the day, it’s never been more important to optimize your website for mobile devices, and not just for desktop.

Test everything. When it comes to conversion optimization, you shouldn’t try to guess anything with your head, but test to see what works best with your website users. When you test, you’d be able to see which tool performs better, what you need to change and you’d discover ways to boost your conversion rate. You can try your hands on different testing methods such as A/B testing, usability testing, multivariate testing etc. Things you may want to test are content length, CTAs, landing pages, forms, different colors and so on.

Be clear and direct in your calls to action. Without a clear CTA, your site visitors may end up not taking the actions you intended for them to take, thus the importance of making your CTAs clear and succinct.

Place the right elements above the fold. Well, that’s because visitors spend 80% of their time on your site looking at elements placed above the fold and the other 20% of time looking at elements below the fold.

Decide on the form length. People are open to filling short forms much more than they’re to filling long forms. So, you decide which form length works best with your visitors.

Create a Unique Value Propositions. Value propositions are one of the most important conversion triggers and so, you have to get it right.

Integrate CTAs into every page. This will allow visitors to click on them no matter which page they are on your site.

Show social proof. Potential customers want to be sure that your product/service has produced results before. So, if your product has helped someone solve a problem, if there are thousands of people using your product or service, document the same and show it to them. Customer testimonials also work well here.

Write more persuasive copy. If your web copy sucks, people are likely not going to buy from you.

Useful CRO Tools

Here some handy CRO tools to help you optimize your website conversion smoothly:

Over the years CRO has grown so much and so, many people have mixed it up with other online practices. That said, I’d like to clear the air on that front by letting you know what conversion rate optimization is NOT.

What CRO is Not

CRO is not A/B testing. A/B testing is only a part of CRO but not CRO itself.

CRO is not about getting more visitors. It’s not about driving 1000s of more visitors to your site. It’s about squeezing more juice out of your current visitors.

CRO is not the end goal. You only optimize your conversion because you want to increase your revenue, not just for the sake of optimization.

CRO is not landing page optimization. Just like A/B testing, landing page optimization is only one of the methods of CRO.

CRO is not SEO. SEO is about driving search traffic to your site, while CRO is about getting those visitors to take the action you want taken.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever wanted to increase your revenue without working so hard to drive more website visitors, optimizing your website conversion is just what you need.

So go ahead, put to work the thoughts we’ve shared with you above.

Now, it’s your take

Ever optimized your website conversion? How did it go? Share your experience with us in the comment section below.

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Navneet Kaushal is the founder and CEO of top ranked Digital Search Marketing Company PageTraffic. He also works as an advisor and consultant with many large companies. Navneet is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He helps value-conscious businesses build site traffic, increase the user base, and boost web sales and bolster customer satisfaction.